The subject of this article is one of the most (and confusingly) contested ideas in our time: Evolution. I will try to limit wasted time defending against ill informed arguments against it, but I will review it in a way that anyone should be able to understand.
Lets step away from the word evolution and go back to the basics of it in the contexts of biology. All there have to be are way of causing differences in an organism genetically, in this case: mutation. It is understandable that most changes in an organism will change its ability to survive in a negative or positive way. The tiger with short stubby teeth will not be able to kill its prey as easily, and most likely wont survive as well. This tiger may survive to produce offspring, but all of its offspring will also have defect teeth, many of them will not survive as well as the rest of the tigers. In the world with the stubbed teeth tigers and the normal tigers, the normal ones will survive and the stubbed tigers will either die out, or become so rare that they are insignificant. Of course this is only after 10 20 or even 100 generations, but it happens and it is inevitable. This exact thing is going on for every animal and every aspect of those animals(color, bone structure, organ efficiency, etc.) It is only difficult to comprehend because it works on such a different time-scale than humans normally view the world with. Our lifespan is so short in this time scale that it takes a number of our human generations to perceive a significant change in a species.
Lets take it yet another step back. More important than there being differences in reproductive success, is simply the ability to reproduce. When something has the ability to reproduce, it will do so. And assuming there are more than 1 reproducing object as well, the one that reproduces faster(and/or survives longer) will be more prominent than the others.
Now evolution is not my forte, and explaining it isn't either. A good book for those interested is The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It takes my understanding of it to a whole new level in a clear and well explained manner.
But, this is not about biology and the evolution of life. This is about the evolution of anything that can evolve. Biology is simply the first object which evolution was first applied to. Attempting to understand the evolution of lifeforms is a glossed over version that tends to hide many key details about the general term: evolution. At this point most would not see why understanding evolution is key to understanding our universe. Evolution is a subset of generalized change in the universe. The difference is that Evolution has a direction of rewarding that which is strongest in its environment. However, most only apply the term evolution to the strife of animals. I on the other hand attribute evolution to any entity that has the ability to change itself in any way. This opens up the ideas to any entity that has a limited resource of some kind. I attribute evolution to every scale of time and space where there are a few particular properties. It requires that there is any possibility of change, any form of production(reproduction is a special case) which can be effected by these changes, and finally any limited resource. I say reproduction is a special case, but this does not limit its importance. When reproduction comes about, it effectively transfers an object into a much quicker timescale. It is no longer a random production of a type of sand, but it is a collection of chemicals that can reproduce themselves at relative light-speed.
But the DNA-protein complex is a snails pace when you consider the speed of the relatively young brain. The brain creates and destroys more ideas in its lifetime than is possible to count. All is done through the process of evolution. The unique properties of the brain harness the universal concept of hierarchies and because of this, can model itself after the universe itself. In this sense the brain is nearly as complex as the universe, and can truly conceptualize most anything in it, assuming the correct time/space - scale is used.
Showing posts with label Universe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Universe. Show all posts
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The Universe - Hierarchies defined(2)
Now the model is nice and all but it does not entirely show how the universe is really made up. It just assumes hierarchies exist and goes from there.
It shows that apparently everything is defined by a quantum mechanic, but as I said earlier, once you get above a few levels of complexity you cannot explain the object. This is why chemists stay in their realm of chemistry even though it effects all matter that we know. Now I am afraid that the last post was getting a bit too abstract so I will begin to use real examples to show that this hierarchy is both relative, hyper dimensional, and effectively neither quantum nor continuous (or both depending on the perspective). As everything is in fact relative, the starting point I choose to define much of this hierarchy is rather arbitrary. So I will pick one and go as far as i can conceptually go in both directions.
My chosen starting point is the single cell in an organism. As a whole it effectively works as one organism(as seen in single celled organisms) but it used as just a part of an tissue in an organ in a body of the whole organism (all of which are intermediate hierarchies). Now lets say this organism was a human. That human is part of a family, which is part of a neighborhood, part of a city part of (occasionally) a state, which is finally part of a country. This country is finally part of a group for the most part is the entirety of the human race. The human race is a part (albeit a large one nowadays) of the global environment which is the arrangement that is particularly one step above us as a whole. But what of the other parts of the global environment, being all the other species in the world, as well as the physical conditions of the world(atmosphere content, average temperature etc.) These simply are other arrangements that are part of the world but came from a different hierarchical path. In any case the global environment is a complex entity on the earth which is a planet among others part of this solar system, which is part of the galaxy, which is finally part of the universe. Here we get to our stopping point because at this point no one has an explanation past this point of hierarchy as much as some believe they do.
Now I will go back and go the other direction. I started with a single human cell and now I will break it apart. The cell has individual live support systems consisting of organelles, one being the nucleus. The nucleus contains DNA information (one of the most detailed entities in existence). This DNA is consisting of all of its parts including nucleotides. These nucleotides consist of the basic elements which finally come down to the subatomic particles. These subatomic particles are treated with quantum rules. Interestingly enough though, we do not really know the make up of these subatomic particles in great detail. It has been proposed through string theory that they are consisting of hyper dimensional strings but we neither can conceptualize this, nor has it entirely been proven. In the end the theory is that matter is a complex formation of the elusively arbitrary concept of energy. Energy however is the basest object that we can conceptualize, and we have barely any base understanding of its makeup. We get to another point where it is too difficult to definitively define a smaller object than energy.
Now this outline seems to run on, but understanding of the hierarchy was necessary. It shows a number of important points in the continuum that can be quantized. These in turn can be seen as the only important parts of the universe while everything else are bridging connections between them. At this point, from simplest to most complex it seems they are energy, atoms, DNA, and finally the brain*. Two points must be made, with this idea, to make sure all the correct questions are made, it should be assumed there is another increment below energy, and yet another increment (which may or may not exist in time yet) above the human brain. The other point that must be made is that in truth the brain is not really the step above DNA, it is instead the medium for which the increment exists: The Idea. This concept is by far the most important one I will use in the Blog, and is therefore beyond the scope of this particular entry.
The importance of these discrete objects is that it leads to the ability of evolution. Evolution has in general become associated only with DNA, but as it will be shown, when made more general, the rules of evolution apply to everything and anything with the ability to be created in one way or another. This will be left for another article.
It shows that apparently everything is defined by a quantum mechanic, but as I said earlier, once you get above a few levels of complexity you cannot explain the object. This is why chemists stay in their realm of chemistry even though it effects all matter that we know. Now I am afraid that the last post was getting a bit too abstract so I will begin to use real examples to show that this hierarchy is both relative, hyper dimensional, and effectively neither quantum nor continuous (or both depending on the perspective). As everything is in fact relative, the starting point I choose to define much of this hierarchy is rather arbitrary. So I will pick one and go as far as i can conceptually go in both directions.
My chosen starting point is the single cell in an organism. As a whole it effectively works as one organism(as seen in single celled organisms) but it used as just a part of an tissue in an organ in a body of the whole organism (all of which are intermediate hierarchies). Now lets say this organism was a human. That human is part of a family, which is part of a neighborhood, part of a city part of (occasionally) a state, which is finally part of a country. This country is finally part of a group for the most part is the entirety of the human race. The human race is a part (albeit a large one nowadays) of the global environment which is the arrangement that is particularly one step above us as a whole. But what of the other parts of the global environment, being all the other species in the world, as well as the physical conditions of the world(atmosphere content, average temperature etc.) These simply are other arrangements that are part of the world but came from a different hierarchical path. In any case the global environment is a complex entity on the earth which is a planet among others part of this solar system, which is part of the galaxy, which is finally part of the universe. Here we get to our stopping point because at this point no one has an explanation past this point of hierarchy as much as some believe they do.
Now I will go back and go the other direction. I started with a single human cell and now I will break it apart. The cell has individual live support systems consisting of organelles, one being the nucleus. The nucleus contains DNA information (one of the most detailed entities in existence). This DNA is consisting of all of its parts including nucleotides. These nucleotides consist of the basic elements which finally come down to the subatomic particles. These subatomic particles are treated with quantum rules. Interestingly enough though, we do not really know the make up of these subatomic particles in great detail. It has been proposed through string theory that they are consisting of hyper dimensional strings but we neither can conceptualize this, nor has it entirely been proven. In the end the theory is that matter is a complex formation of the elusively arbitrary concept of energy. Energy however is the basest object that we can conceptualize, and we have barely any base understanding of its makeup. We get to another point where it is too difficult to definitively define a smaller object than energy.
Now this outline seems to run on, but understanding of the hierarchy was necessary. It shows a number of important points in the continuum that can be quantized. These in turn can be seen as the only important parts of the universe while everything else are bridging connections between them. At this point, from simplest to most complex it seems they are energy, atoms, DNA, and finally the brain*. Two points must be made, with this idea, to make sure all the correct questions are made, it should be assumed there is another increment below energy, and yet another increment (which may or may not exist in time yet) above the human brain. The other point that must be made is that in truth the brain is not really the step above DNA, it is instead the medium for which the increment exists: The Idea. This concept is by far the most important one I will use in the Blog, and is therefore beyond the scope of this particular entry.
The importance of these discrete objects is that it leads to the ability of evolution. Evolution has in general become associated only with DNA, but as it will be shown, when made more general, the rules of evolution apply to everything and anything with the ability to be created in one way or another. This will be left for another article.
Monday, May 12, 2008
The Universe - Hierarchies defined(1)
As I stated before the brain is as complex as the universe. To be fair this is not entirely true. Because of the efficiency of biology, the brain is only as complex as it needs to be to get the job of understanding its environment done. But, what is this environment? this universe?
The short answer to this question is "I don't know; and no one knows exactly." The big questions about it are unanswered in a real (meaning proven) way. These include questions such as "where did the universe come from," "is there anything important that we cannot see," "how did it start," and "how it will end," among others.
However because we do know so much about this unknown entity, we can make a few good guesses about the real structure. Unfortunately the difficult part is finding where to start. The two major points that need to be understood in depth are hierarchies, and evolutions. This article will only deal with hierarchies.
I will start with a viewpoint that is used by Richard Dawkins, but I will expand on it greatly. He professed at one point an acceptable way of interpreting reductionism. I believe he called it relative reductionism. This view sets up everything in the scope of hierarchies. In this view you cannot explain something in terms of its smallest unit as it would be too complex. Once you get down to 3 or 4 levels of complexity under what you are trying to explain, it begins to get fuzzy and too complicated. Noone can explain a human heart using only the building blocks of subatomic particles, but when using the mechanisms of blood flow and muscle contraction, the explanation is relatively simple. Now this is key: Complexity is relative for what you are attempting to explain.
I will attempt to create a model that holds true for any complex object. This will actually be seen to hold true for every object, because any object is complex from some lower perspective. I will do this with definitions of only a few abstract entities:
Hierarchy: Order of Arrangements from the "highest"* complexity to "lowest"* complexity
Arrangement: Single generalized entity of lower arrangements connected by lower relations
Relation: Border or connection between arrangements that is categorized by frequency of events between such arrangements. Defined as a steady state between differing lower arrangements and relations
Event: Any significant** change in relations or arrangements. There are only a handful of distinct events such as creation, destruction, and aggregation. There are also a few that are combined versions of these.
Property: Complex combination of simple arrangements relations and events that create a general tendency of the larger arrangement (eg. destructive property commonly destroys that which is around it)
Void: Partly unknown. All that can be said is that it is either an arrangement of such low complexity that it has its own unique properties, or it is complex in a completely different direction making it difficult to understand know and understand. Possibly the only hole in the logic because this model assumes the definition of all that exists, and that non-existence does not exist. In any case voids appear to be relative as well; space is a void to a planet, air is a void to a human and water is void to a plankton.
*assuming high and low complexity are all relative and hypothetically go infinitely in both directions. High complexity is defined as complex and low complexity is defined as simple.
**significance is also relative and dependant on the perspective
The most interesting facet of this model is the recursion of the 3 key ideas: Arrangements, Relations, and Events. Arrangements are combinations of simpler arrangements and relations. Relations are combinations of simpler events and relations. Events are effects in time on simple relations and. I will stop here for this article, but the story definitely does not end here.
The short answer to this question is "I don't know; and no one knows exactly." The big questions about it are unanswered in a real (meaning proven) way. These include questions such as "where did the universe come from," "is there anything important that we cannot see," "how did it start," and "how it will end," among others.
However because we do know so much about this unknown entity, we can make a few good guesses about the real structure. Unfortunately the difficult part is finding where to start. The two major points that need to be understood in depth are hierarchies, and evolutions. This article will only deal with hierarchies.
I will start with a viewpoint that is used by Richard Dawkins, but I will expand on it greatly. He professed at one point an acceptable way of interpreting reductionism. I believe he called it relative reductionism. This view sets up everything in the scope of hierarchies. In this view you cannot explain something in terms of its smallest unit as it would be too complex. Once you get down to 3 or 4 levels of complexity under what you are trying to explain, it begins to get fuzzy and too complicated. Noone can explain a human heart using only the building blocks of subatomic particles, but when using the mechanisms of blood flow and muscle contraction, the explanation is relatively simple. Now this is key: Complexity is relative for what you are attempting to explain.
I will attempt to create a model that holds true for any complex object. This will actually be seen to hold true for every object, because any object is complex from some lower perspective. I will do this with definitions of only a few abstract entities:
Hierarchy: Order of Arrangements from the "highest"* complexity to "lowest"* complexity
Arrangement: Single generalized entity of lower arrangements connected by lower relations
Relation: Border or connection between arrangements that is categorized by frequency of events between such arrangements. Defined as a steady state between differing lower arrangements and relations
Event: Any significant** change in relations or arrangements. There are only a handful of distinct events such as creation, destruction, and aggregation. There are also a few that are combined versions of these.
Property: Complex combination of simple arrangements relations and events that create a general tendency of the larger arrangement (eg. destructive property commonly destroys that which is around it)
Void: Partly unknown. All that can be said is that it is either an arrangement of such low complexity that it has its own unique properties, or it is complex in a completely different direction making it difficult to understand know and understand. Possibly the only hole in the logic because this model assumes the definition of all that exists, and that non-existence does not exist. In any case voids appear to be relative as well; space is a void to a planet, air is a void to a human and water is void to a plankton.
*assuming high and low complexity are all relative and hypothetically go infinitely in both directions. High complexity is defined as complex and low complexity is defined as simple.
**significance is also relative and dependant on the perspective
The most interesting facet of this model is the recursion of the 3 key ideas: Arrangements, Relations, and Events. Arrangements are combinations of simpler arrangements and relations. Relations are combinations of simpler events and relations. Events are effects in time on simple relations and. I will stop here for this article, but the story definitely does not end here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)